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John H. Hinderaker

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John H. Hinderaker (born September 1950) (the name is pronounced hinder-rocker) is a conservative American lawyer and a blogger at the Power Line weblog, as well as a fellow at the Claremont Institute. Hinderaker is best known for promoting a conservative ideology regarding foreign policy.

He is an advisory board member of the North Star Legal Center, the legal arm of the Minnesota Family Council/Institute; the NSLC also is "instrumental in giving definition and professional credibility to the conservative pro-family legal position in Minnesota."[1] He is a 1971 graduate of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and completed Harvard Law School in 1974. Power Line has promoted outsiders as candidates to be Dartmouth alumni trustees, such as T.J. Rodgers, founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor.

Hinderaker at one stage used the handle "Hindrocket" on his political blog.

Hinderaker's positions on controversial scientific issues includes skepticism about the alarmist views of global warming dating back to 1992[2]. In April 2006, he wrote that "scientific support for [the anthropogenic global warming] theory is weak.[3] On other issues, he has written that "Darwin's theory of macroevolution is plainly wrong, on strictly scientific grounds"[4]and that "benefits of embryonic stem cell research have been vastly oversold".[5]

He once, in an intentionally hyperbolic sentence, described George W. Bush as "[a] man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius ... like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another." [6]

60 Minutes controversy

Hinderaker was one of the first on the blogosphere to allege how the Bush National Guard document included in a '60 Minutes' report might have been a hoax, since the document used proportional fonts which are common on modern word processors but were only available on certain IBM "Composer" models in 1972.[7] However, forensic document specialist Dr. Philip Bouffard stated, "I found nothing like this in any of my typewriter specimens," and that the documents' fonts were "certainly consistent with what I see in Times Roman."[8] Furthermore, Dr. Bouffard doubted that President Bush's commanding commanding officer would've used the IBM "Composer" because of its size. It is also unlikely that he would've used a machine that required the user to type each line twice as the "Composer" did.[9]

CBS later apologized for the story, saying that the documents could not be verified.[10]

Vulgar email

On February 20, 2005, Minnesota anonoblogger "minnpolitics" published a profanity-laced email John Hinderaker wrote in response to an email comment about Jeff Gannon:[11]

You dumb shit, he didn't get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties' concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid asshole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing shithead. And don't bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don't qualify, you stupid shit.

Hinderaker offered an apology, explaining that after a flood of "inexpressibly vulgar and vile" emails and phone calls:[12]

I read about ten [emails] in a row that were vulgar and abusive in varying degrees; most were unprintable. At that point I snapped and lost my temper. I sent irate and intemperate replies to the last couple of emails I read—unfortunately, not the most abusive ones, but the ones I read after losing my temper.
The next day, one of these emailers responded that he thought my reply was disproportionate to the offensiveness of his email; I agreed and apologized for having reacted inappropriately. I would have done the same with the "Minnesota Politics" guy if he had contacted me rather than posting my email—which obviously wasn't intended for publication—on his site.

City Pages gave Hinderaker a "Best Meltdown" Award [13] for this in their 2005 "Best of the Twin Cities" Issue.

Schiavo memo

On March 21, 2005, Hinderaker said he doubted the authenticity of the 'Schiavo memo". In an entry titled "Is This the Biggest Hoax Since the Sixty Minutes Story?",[14] Hinderaker said:

Based on the fragments from the memo that were reported by The Washington Post, I question its authenticity. It does not sound like something written by a conservative; it sounds like a liberal fantasy of how conservatives talk.

He continued to discuss this claim for the next several days, adding that:[15]

[T]he content of the memo is highly suspicious. Why would anyone mix political strategy points—the ones the Democrats want to talk about—with talking points for Senatorial argument? A competent staffer preparing a talking points memo wouldn't do that, but a Democratic dirty trickster would.

On April 7, 2005, Republican senator Mel Martinez revealed that his senior legal aide, Brian Darling, had authored the memo[16]. In acknowledging this revelation, Hinderaker continued to criticise ABC News and The Washington Post for anti-Republican reporting.[17] [18]

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